Long, long day.
If I had known what was going to happen at the drop off location, I would have stayed in the hotel for a couple of more hours versus trying to get over there at 8:00 am. The first thing that threw me off was that the drop off point was not owned or operated by our company. A competing company's yard, I was thinking, they must have given me the wrong address. But I verified it and sure enough, our company has an operation running out of there. But it took hours from the time I talked to the manager there until the time I was in a rental vehicle, had my stuff out of the truck and headed out of there.
I was pleasantly surprised that they gave me a 2020 Chevrolet Camero for a rental. I have never driven one - well I drove old school 70's version muscle car style wayyyyy back when. It wasn't my car but I did get to drive it. This car had some get up and go, it was also a convertible. Too cold to open it up, I have never driven in a convertible with the roof down. Oh well. It was in the 30's I wasn't going to risk getting some kind of respiratory infection/ailment driving down the road with the roof down. Especially since at one point, I drove through around 40 miles of snow falling.
Anyway, I got to - what is the name of that town - I drove through all of these little town and winding 2 lane highways with mountains and quaint houses and businesses. It was rather surreal. You don't see stuff like that in the South. I also got to drive straight through the heart of Pittsburgh! I hadn't been there since I was 10 years old! My child hood memory of the place? I'd say it was half of what I perceived today. Houses strewn out all over mountain sides and just no rhyme or reason to it. Kind of junky looking to be honest. The incline still there, that thing has been there forever.
The name of the town is Newell, in West Virginia. And the lady at the office had no clue about any of it, of course. It took quite a while to sort that out, then find a mechanic at another facility down the road where the trucks were parked. These trucks had also been "sitting awhile". To the tune of having to run 2 battery chargers to get the thing to fire up. After that? Paperwork. The only thing in there was the cab card - registration. All the other paperwork was missing. Back to the office - the lady was gone. Back to the mechanics shop, maybe they had something in there. Sure enough, stapled copies of the entire set of paperwork needed, including insurance. Then I had to go find a fire extinguisher - mandatory in commercial vehicles.
This truck had no mattress, no way I was sleeping in there tonight. Did I mention that they are directly across the street from a giant Shell motor oil refinery plant? And that the lady told me well if you need work, I can keep you busy hauling motor oil? ALL over the United States, as far away as California! Yea, no thanks. I want nothing to do with Cali, especially with the hypocrite Governor Newsom and his outrageous shutdown decrees. Still was intriguing. The little towns are really nostaligic and interesting to me, but I"m not sure I want to live in PA. Well, I"m 99% sure I don't want to live there and if I did, it wouldn't be my home town of Pittsburgh.
Anyway, after a lengthy ordeal - and bewilderment that no one knew I was coming and therefore they hadn't prepared any of these trucks to move, I got out of there. Drove across a draw bridge that had a sign "weight limit 10 tons". It said nothing about no trucks, so I just drove on across. At the other end, an old man was shaking his head at me. 10 tons! Yup, this truck weighs around 18,000 pounds, it's under 10 tens. 10 tons! again. Sir, this truck doesn't weigh 10 tons. You shouldn't be here! Sir? There is no sign saying no trucks, it just says a 10 ton weight limit. He wasn't going to win, there was no 'no trucks' sign. I wasn't over 10 tons, if he wanted to call state troopers to bring portable scales, let him!
This dude wouldn't budge so I just said, well I'm not from around here. Which I'm not. He smiled and waved me on lmao. I was hoping that I would end up on Interstate - no desire to drive 210 miles on back roads, that would take forever. Sure enough, I was on a state highway shortly and then onto Interstate after that and it was Interstate the rest of the way. I only drove 550 miles today, but I feel like I drove a thousand.
It didn't help that when I got to the hotel here, the dude started arguing about CLC authorization. There is a card that is issued for - usually employees of companies - to use when a company sends an authorization to use it. But, there is also a crew fax, where the company authorizes an employee to go through the CLC system, but the company sends a fax instead of the employee having a card. This dude - attempted to tell me there is no such thing as a crew fax. I about busted out laughing. The entire 3 years I've been with this company, I've been going through crew fax.
It got annoying fast tho. This guy was totally unprofessional. I was/am tired, didn't want to deal with it. I just stood my ground. You really need to go make a call to someone to find out how this works. And? He finally did. He came back and said, okay, you are right but the fax never came through. Ok, fine, I'll deal with that. My manager called them and they sent the fax over - eventually. Instead of offering to allow me in the room - as every other hotel I've been to has done when this has happened and waiting on the fax - he offered nothing. Here is yet another hotel that is going to get a review that the chain probably won't care for and I don't care. I was never rude to him, I didn't raise my voice, didn't call him names, just stood my ground.
Anyway, it's been an incredibly long day and I"m really beat. Too much, actually, to try and go to bed yet. Gotta relax a bit and get more into sleep mode.
Nothing new on the home front. Still waiting on the insurance adjuster to send someone out. Apparently he is going on another vacation. He was just on a 2 week vacation and already going again? Without anyone to cover for him while he's gone? Whatever. I'm glad I"m not there atm. I don't need to be breathing in air that is contaminated with mold/black mold crap.
I"ve got truck number one up here - well I have to take it to the yard in the morning. Then, allegedly, 3 more to go. And after that I suspect I'll be sent home. But, that's 1,600 plus miles of driving back and forth with tractors. I doubt it will be more than one per day for the problem of getting a rental car at one end and getting rid of it at the other. The camaro is sitting in their yard, the lady told me we could deal with getting it back to the Enterprise when I get back. Lol, well I'll be coming back with another rental car lmao.
Well enough of this.
Going to sleep.
